I’ve been using Razer products for decades at this point. The Deathadder is my main mouse and I’ve had ~half a dozen over the years of various gens. They seem to last an incredibly long time. What finally gets me to replace them is that the mouse wheel wears out and becomes super loose (shamefully I am reliant on habits for using the wheel to switch weapons) OR when eventually the the M1 button starts malfunctioning such as with double clicking. But, again, the mice last for years and years of hard, nightly use before these issues come up. I try to keep a few extra new-in-box Deathadders in my closet so I’m ready if I ever need to swap and about half a year ago such a time came. I had 2 Deathadder Essentials that have been sitting for many years as backups and I opened one. Now it’s been around half a year and I’m experiencing a problem with it that I’ve never had before and I’m hoping to get some advice on how to fix it:
I play mostly arena shooter type games that sometimes require very fast flicks of the mouse to whip around 180 or hit midair projectiles. I have noticed that the mouse is failing to keep up with tracking. I hope I can describe this well enough. I do a hard flick, say, up and to the side but it feels like it’s “dragging” a bit IN GAME and doesn’t turn as far as it should. It’s like the sensor is failing to keep up. The faster I move the mouse the more likely I am to have this issue. It either doesn’t happen or is not noticeable at slow speeds. The other part that might be relevant (though I can’t be sure) is that seemingly the harder I press down on the mouse the more this issue occurs. I try not to press hard on my mice since there’s no benefit but overall I don’t think much about it in the moment and under stress I think I sometimes press a bit harder. I thought maybe the mouse feet/skates were wearing out and it’s creating some difference in how high the mouse sits on the mousepad (large Razer Goliathus) but I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a tiny bit of visible wear on the rear skate but otherwise nothing looks worn of damaged or otherwise off in any way. Also it would be sad if the skates wore out that fast considering how they’d last for years on all my old mice and I’d use those until they were very worn and the mouse felt physically more draggy on the pad after which I’d put on new ones.
Also I’m a weirdo that has 2 mice hooked up to my bungee (yes, old school wired for life), the other being a Razer Cobra which is 2 years old at the most, because when I occasionally play certain characters I use a different mouse. Well the Cobra is functioning flawlessly no matter how hard I flick it which narrows down a lot of potential troubleshooting. I’m 99% sure it’s an issue with the Deathadder itself.
I could replace the mouse feet but the current ones seem fine so I’m not sure that’s the way to go. Obviously I can just open the 2nd Deathadder Essential but that seems like such a shame and a waste since this one is only half a year old. I’d rather fix this one and figure out what’s happening to it so I can better know how to prevent issues in the future. Anyone have any ideas/advice on what I should try? Thanks.